Open your doors, Lebanon, so that fire may devour your cedars! - Zechariah 11:1

Today's Scripture Reading (October 13, 2023): Zechariah 11

Forty years before the destruction of the Temple, around the eighth day of Nisan, the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus records a happening in the Temple. Josephus records that there was a light in the shape of the sword that hung over the Temple. He also talks about a bright light that shone inside the Temple. If we do the math, the Temple was destroyed in 70 C.E., so the event Josephus tells us about could have taken place on the eighth day of Nisan 30 C.E. Just to put a point on this thought, Jesus likely died in Jerusalem on the fifteenth day of Nisan in 30 C.E. Now before we make too much of the event, neither of these events, the light inside the Temple or the crucifixion of Jesus, can be dated to precisely 30 C.E. Still, both of these events happened somewhere within a few years of that date.

According to the story told by Josephus, a light burned in the Temple, and, at the same time, the gates of the Temple opened of their own accord. The significance of this door opening at the Temple is that the Temple doors were heavy, weighted down with bronze and other metals, such that it took twenty men to open and close them. These doors would not be moved by a breeze flowing through Temple from an open window. The opening of these doors was a significant event.

The Temple officials gathered the personnel needed to close the doors again, but the incident shook the Jews who knew of the event. The reason was that, from this reading in Zechariah, they believed that this event meant that the Temple would soon be destroyed for a second time. Oh, they likely looked for another rational explanation, but they kept coming back to Zechariah's words.

What they understood that we sometimes miss is that the Temple was constructed from Lebanon's cedars. Zechariah's comment had come to be interpreted as a threat against the Second Temple in Jerusalem. Some believed that maybe Zechariah was being literal here, that Lebanon would open its doors to the powers that would flow from the north toward Israel, destroying Jacob's nation. That accurately described what had happened in the past when Babylon had defeated the country, and it was the path that Rome would take in the future. And that would be disaster enough. But others were sure that the threat was against the Temple in Jerusalem. So, when the doors opened of their own accord, those present saw the vulnerability of Lebanon's cedars that they believed one day would be consumed by fire.

Forty years later, the doors to the Temple were opened one more time. This time, the Romans entered the Temple, burned the cedars of Lebanon, and destroyed, for a second time, the place of worship for the Jews. And it all started with doors that opened open all by themselves.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Zechariah 12 & 13